Indigenous rights reversals in Brazil under Bolsonaro

We are pleased to publish the papers and presentations resulting from a debate on policy setbacks and indigenous rights reversals in Brazil under Bolsonaro, and how to fight back, which took place during the XII Sesquiannual Conference in Vienna (June 2019).

Right wing president Bolsonaro came to office vowing that during his term “not one centimeter of land will be demarcated for indigenous reserves or quilombolas.” Promising to squelch the aspirations of ethnic and racial minorities, he incites his supporters, “Let’s make Brazil for the majorities. Minorities have to bow to the majorities. Minorities will fit in or just disappear.” He has opened up existing indigenous lands to extractive investment and heavily promoted agribusiness interests. Unsurprisingly, deforestation rates have begun to skyrocket, while environmental protections have been massively rolled back. For Brazilian Indians, Bolsonaro’s assumption to power represents nothing less than a political emergency. This Portuguese- and English-language session brought together prominent Brazilian indigenous activists and anthropologists to discuss the threat posed by Bolsonaro’s policies. It aimed to promote awareness about the current critical moment and to discuss strategies for resistance and the role the SALSA community and other anthropologists might play.

Clarice Cohn and Bill Fisher, organizers of this Debate, prepared the edition of these results, which include: Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and Jozileia Kaingang‘s oral presentations via teleconference (translated into English by Louis Forline), Clarice Cohn‘s Power Point presentation in Portuguese (with and English translation by Bill Fisher) and her paper in Portuguese, and Stephen Baines paper, both in English and Portuguese. You will also find a single pdf that collects all the papers.

You can find here information about the Debate and the pdf files of the papers and presentations.